Time Warped

March 11, 2013
Whether you conceive of time as a “breeze” or a “crushing weight,” Hammond’s book is worth yours. Focusing on the experience of time rather than its “objective reality,” the award-winning science writer and BBC broadcaster demonstrates how the timely coordination of brain, nerves, and muscles is essential for everything from reading time tables to understanding spoken language. But, as everyone knows, time rarely seems to pass at a constant rate—it seems to slow when you are stressed, and go too fast while you are in vacation mode. As such, Hammond explores how time perception (or “mind time”) is “elastic”; investigates the various ways in which people conceive of time in spatial terms; and examines the various causes for the experience of distended or contracted time—depression, ADHD, chemical processes in the brain, and even temperature can fool us into the belief that time is speeding up or slowing down. Along the way, readers are introduced to curious characters like Bob Petrella, whose hyperthymesia makes it impossible to forget anything, and Michel Siffre, a French speleologist who spent months living underground to determine whether humans have an internal clock. This lively introduction to the psychology of time perception is an intriguing take on the fluidity of reality. Agents: David Miller, the Garamond Agency; Will Francis, Janklow & Nesbit (U.K.) Ltd.